An opening and closing control apparatus that automatically opens and closes a sliding door provided on a side of vehicle body has been disclosed in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 2003-020859. In this reference, the opening and closing control apparatus includes a sliding door slidable along a side portion of the vehicle body, an opening and closing driving mechanism equipped with a cable, etc., to transfer driving force from a motor to the sliding door and a control system that controls an operation of the opening and closing driving mechanism. Thereby, the sliding door is automatically opened and closed.
An outside handle and an inside handle are provided on the sliding door, each of which manually releases a latch that holds the sliding door at its fully closed position. Each of the outside and inside handles is provided with an opening switch that is switched on at the handle operation to open the sliding door and a closing switch that is switched on at the handle operation to close the sliding door.
The control system is connected to the opening and closing switches. The control system is also connected to a manual operation selection switch that switches between manual open/close mode and automatic open/close mode, a switch for opening, and a switch for closure, all set by the driver's seat.
When the manual operation selection switch is set to the automatic open/close mode, the control system automatically slides and opens/closes the sliding door by the opening and closing driving mechanism. When the opening switch provided at both of the outside and inside handles, or the switch for opening provided at the driver's seat, is switched on the opening and closing driving mechanism operates in a direction that opens the sliding door, and the sliding door automatically slides to its fully open position. When the closing switch provided at both of the outside and inside handles, or the switch for closure provided at the driver's seat, is switched on the opening and closing driving mechanism operates in a direction that closes the sliding door, and the sliding door automatically slides to its fully closed position.